CO L D WA R I N T E R N AT I O N A L H I S T O R Y P R O J E C T WOR K I N G PA P E R # 4 6

Moscow's Surprise: The Soviet-IsraeliAlliance of 1947-1949By Laurent Rucker

THE COLD WAR INTERNATIONAL HISTORY PROJECT WORKING PAPER SERIES

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This paper is one of a series of Working Papers published by the Cold War International History Project of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. Established in 1991 by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) disseminates new information and perspectives on the history of the Cold War as it emerges from previously inaccessible sources on “the other side” of the post-World War II superpower rivalry. The project supports the full and prompt release of historical materials by governments on all sides of the Cold War, and seeks to accelerate the process of integrating new sources, materials and perspectives from the former “Communist bloc” with the historiography of the Cold War which has been written over the past few decades largely by Western scholars reliant on Western archival sources. It also seeks to transcend barriers of language, geography, and regional specialization to create new links among scholars interested in Cold War history. Among the activities undertaken by the project to promote this aim are a periodic BULLETIN to disseminate new findings, views, and activities pertaining to Cold War history; a fellowship program for young historians from the former Communist bloc to conduct archival research and study Cold War history in the United States; international scholarly meetings, conferences, and seminars; and publications. The CWIHP Working Paper Series is designed to provide a speedy publications outlet for historians associated with the project who have gained access to newly-available archives and sources and would like to share their results. We especially welcome submissions by junior scholars from the former Communist bloc who have done research in their countries’ archives and are looking to introduce their findings to a Western audience. As a non-partisan institute of scholarly study, the Woodrow Wilson Center takes no position on the historical interpretations and opinions offered by the authors.

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#46 Laurent Rucker, “Moscow’s Surprise: The Soviet-Israeli Alliance of 1947-1949” #47 Sergey S. Radchenko, “The Soviet Union and the North Korean Seizure of the USS Pueblo: Evidence from Russian Archives”

Special Working Papers Series #1 Mark Kramer, “Soviet Deliberations during the Polish Crisis, 1980-1981”

Moscow's Surprise: The Soviet-Israeli Alliance of 1947-1949

By Laurent Rucker

As the Cold War emerged in the wake of World War II, few political observers

would have predicted that the Soviet Union would support the creation of a Jewish

State in Palestine. Long-rooted communist hostility towards the Zionist project, the end

of the Grand Alliance, and the strong tradition of anti-Semitism in Russia all suggested

that Moscow would strongly oppose the plan to partition Palestine into Jewish and

Palestinian states. And yet, from 1947 to 1949, the Soviet Union provided political,

military, and demographic support for the Zionist movement. Newly uncovered

documents from Russian archives illuminate when, why, and how Moscow’s foreign

policy took this surprising turn.

First Steps

Zionist leaders first made contact with the Soviet government after the

conclusion of the Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1939, when the Soviet annexation of Eastern

Poland, Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina, and the Baltic States brought almost two

million Jews into the Soviet Union. The number of Jews living under Soviet rule

thereby increased from 3,020,000 in 1939 to 4,800,000 in 1940, in addition to almost

300,000 refugees from German-occupied Poland, Romania, and Czechoslovakia.

Concern about the fate of these Jews led the Zionist leadership to open a dialogue with

Soviet diplomats, especially Ivan Maisky, Moscow’s ambassador to London.

The first discussions concerned Jewish refugees and immigration. In February

1940 the chief rabbi of Palestine, Isaac Halevi Herzog, met with Maisky to ask for

transit visas for students in religious schools who had fled from Poland to Lithuania and

wanted to emigrate to Palestine.1 Nine months later, Zionist leaders decided to contact

Soviet diplomats in both London and Washington in hopes of sending a delegation to

Moscow to discuss the problem of Jewish refugees from Poland.2 Chaim Weizmann,

1 Jacob Hen-Tov, "Contacts between Soviet Ambassador Maisky and Zionist leaders during World War II," Soviet Jewish Affairs, 8: 1 (1978): 49. See also the memorandum sent by Nahum Goldmann to Edvard Benes published in Documents on Israeli-Soviet Relations 1941-1953 (DISR), Part I: 1941-May 1949 (London: Frank Cass, 2000): 65. 2 DISR, Part I, p. 1.

2

president of the World Zionist Organization, accordingly met with Ivan Maisky in

January 1941. After making the remarkable suggestion that the Soviet Union could

purchase oranges from Palestine and pay for them with furs delivered to New York,

Weizmann brought up the future of Palestine. Maisky stated that there would have to be

an exchange of populations in Palestine in order to settle Jews from Europe. Weizmann

replied that if half a million Arabs could be transferred, two million Jews could be put

in their place. Maisky did not appear to be shocked by this idea.3

The catastrophic change in the position of the Soviet Union following the

German invasion of the USSR just five months later offered the Zionists an opportunity

to expand on their early contacts. They began to pursue more forcefully two major

goals: (1) to reach an agreement with Moscow that would allow Polish Jews in the

Soviet Union to emigrate to Palestine, and (2) to convince the anti-Zionist Bolshevik

leaders that the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine would not be contrary to their

interests.

On 9 October 1941 David Ben Gurion, president of the Jewish Agency, met

Maisky in London. He explained the achievements of the Yishuv, the Jewish settlement

in Palestine, highlighting its socialist aims. He proposed sending a delegation to

Moscow to discuss the future of Palestine and the contribution the Zionist movement

could make to the Soviet war effort. Ben Gurion emphasized the future role of the

Soviet Union as a leading great power in the postwar era. Maisky asked Ben Gurion to

send a memorandum on the issue.4 From Moscow’s viewpoint, the purpose of these

contacts with Zionist representatives was to facilitate an American contribution to the

Soviet war effort. Maisky stated to Ben Gurion, "You are going to America. You will

render us a great service if you will impress upon people there the urgency of helping

us; we need tanks, guns, planes—as many as possible, and above all, as soon as

possible."5

On 2 March 1942 Chaim Weizmann sent a memorandum to Maisky pointing out

the "massacres and sufferings inflicted by the Nazis" on European Jewry. After the war,

wrote Weizmann, most of the Jews surviving in Eastern Europe would have no choice

3 Sovetsko-Izrail'skie otnoshenia. Sbornik Dokumentov 1941-1953 (SIO) (Moskva: Mezhdunarodnye Otnoshenia, 2000), vol. 1, pp. 15-17. 4 9 October 1941. DISR, Part I, p. 11. 5 Ibid, p. 13.

3

but to emigrate to Palestine. He tried to convince the Soviets that "past

misunderstandings should not rule out a new orientation of the USSR towards Zionism"

and called on Moscow to "take an interest in the Zionist solution to the Jewish

question."6

At the same time, the Zionist movement explored other channels, particularly

through the Soviet embassy in Ankara. Thanks to intercession by the British

ambassador, in January 1942 Eliahu Epstein, the representative of the Jewish Agency in

Cairo, met with the Soviet ambassador to Turkey, Sergei Vinogradov. Epstein offered

to send a field hospital, medicines, and doctors to the front, and asked for one or two

permanent representatives in Moscow to deal with immigration permits for Jewish

refugees in the USSR. He also mentioned the problem of Zionist prisoners in the Soviet

Union. In his report to Moshe Shertok, head of the political department of the Jewish

Agency for Palestine, Epstein decried the ignorance of Vinogradov, "which is the result

of arrogance and communist propaganda." According to Epstein, direct contacts were

useful in explaining the goals of Zionism, even if the conversations with Soviet

diplomats "did not advance our interests towards their resolution."7

The strategy of the Zionist movement proved fruitful. In August 1942, two

diplomats from the Soviet embassy in Ankara, Sergei Mikhailov and Nikolai Petrenko,

went to Palestine for the first time to attend the founding convention of the V-League,

an organization established to support the Soviet war effort. The V-League collected

money and held various public events that met with immediate success. One year after

its founding, the League had 20,000 members and one hundred sections in Palestine.

The V-League was not simply a pro-Soviet organization. It included

representatives of all Zionist-Socialist parties, the Communist Party, and intellectuals.

Because it was not under Soviet control, the Soviet foreign ministry was suspicious of

the League, but nevertheless considered its activity “useful."8 Petrenko and Mikhailov

met with leaders of the Yishuv, the British high commissioner, and Arab representatives

in Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Zionist leaders regarded the visit of the two diplomats as,

on balance, positive. Mikhailov had declared that the "Jews’ achievements were beyond

6 2 March 1942. DISR, Part I, p. 28. 7 25 January 1942. DISR, Part I, p. 21. 8 3 September 1942. Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsial'no-Politicheskoi Istorii (Russian State Archive of Social-Political History, RGASPI), f. 17, o. 125, d. 86, l. 27.

4

anyone's dreams," even though the Soviet representatives said nothing about the

position Moscow would take regarding the partition of Palestine.9 Nonetheless, as

Yitzhak Ben-Zvi stated, this visit "should be seen as a sort of beginning of new contacts

with Soviet Russia. For the first time in modern history, representatives of Russia saw

ten of thousands of Jews working and fighting."10

Maisky in Palestine

From 1943 onwards, contact between Soviet and Zionist representatives

intensified as plans for the postwar order were formulated. The Jewish Agency used

every channel it could think of to send the message to Moscow that there were no

longer any grounds for antagonism between the Soviet Union and Zionism. The

moment had now come to establish relations of mutual understanding. This was the

substance of a memorandum Nahum Goldmann, founder of the World Jewish Congress

in New York, sent to Moscow in May 1943 via the Czechoslovak president-in-exile,

Eduard Benes.11

Once more Ivan Maisky played a central role in Soviet-Zionist rapprochement.

A few days before his departure for Moscow, where he was transferred in order to

prepare the future peace conferences, Maisky met with Chaim Weizmann and told him

that the Soviet government understood the Zionist aims and would "certainly stand by

them.” As he had during his first conversation with Weizmann two years earlier,

however, Maisky still worried about the area’s capacity to absorb the Yishuv because of

the "small size of Palestine."12

In route from London to Moscow, the Soviet diplomat stopped in Egypt and

then in Palestine in order to form his own opinion of Zionist achievements. He stayed

less than two days in the Holy Land, where he met with U.N. High Commissioner

Harold McMichael. He also had a brief but important visit with the president of the

Jewish Agency, Ben Gurion. Maisky, accompanied by his wife and escorted by British

army and intelligence officials, visited two kibbutzim near Jerusalem together with Ben

Gurion. During their conversation, Maisky raised the issue of the postwar settlement:

9 31 August 1942. DISR, Part I, p. 41. 10 Ibid, p. 42. 11 27 May 1943. DISR, Part I, p. 65. 12 14 September 1943. DISR, Part I, p. 68.

5

"After the war there will be a serious Jewish problem and it will be resolved; we have

to express an opinion, so we must know. We are told that there is no room here in

Palestine, we want to know the truth, what is the capacity of Palestine?"13 After visiting

the kibbutzim, the delegation decided to go the Jewish district of Jerusalem, creating

panic among British security officers. Maisky’s interest in the Yishuv surprised Ben

Gurion. "I could hardly believe it,” he enthused. “It obligates us to act — here is

another country that is taking an interest in this question."14

The Zionist movement thus achieved its first goal—involving the USSR in the

question of the fate of Palestine. But it had no guarantee regarding Moscow’s future

position. On the eve of the German surrender, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and his

foreign minister, V. M. Molotov, were faced with a choice in the Middle East between

the Arab option and the Jewish option.

A New World Order

As early as December 1941, after the Wehrmacht had failed to conquer

Moscow, Soviet leaders began planning for the postwar order. The primary goal of

Stalin and Molotov was to preserve the territorial gains in Eastern Europe they had

obtained during the period of the Nazi-Soviet Pact. They expressed this aim clearly to

British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden during his visit to Moscow in late December.

The formula was then repeated in numerous memoranda produced by commissions and

working groups established to plan for the postwar order.

In January 1944 Ivan Maisky, the author of one of these planning memoranda,

sent Molotov a long synthesis of his thinking about the postwar order, centered on the

strategic objective of preserving Soviet gains in Eastern Europe.15 According to

Maisky, the postwar order had to create a "long peace” in Europe and Asia lasting

between 30 and 50 years so that the USSR would have time to become sufficiently

strong that it need not fear any aggression and would be able to deter any power or any

combination of powers in Europe and Asia from even considering such aggression. This

long peace was also necessary for Europe to become socialist, since Maisky did not

expect proletarian revolutions to occur in Europe after the war.

13 4 October 1943. DISR, Part I, p. 71. 14 Ibid, p. 72. 15 Document published in Istochnik, No. 4 (Moscow) 1995, pp. 124-152.

6

In such a scenario, according to Leninist principles, Moscow’s strategy should

be to exploit the contradictions between the imperialist powers (Great Britain and

United States) in pursuit of Soviet interests. In classical balance of power thinking,

Maisky suggested keeping Great Britain strong so as to counterbalance the United

States’ imperialist expansion. On this point Maisky differed from Maxim Litvinov,

Soviet deputy commissar of foreign affairs. Maisky argued that British power would

remain dominant in Western Europe and that the United States would retreat into

isolationism. He suggested that it was possible to reconcile the interests of the Soviet

Union and Great Britain. Litvinov, on the other hand, was in favor of a Soviet-

American rapprochement against Great Britain since he expected the contradictions

between London and Moscow to become more acute after the war. Following the defeat

of Germany, and with France and Italy weakened, the USSR would remain the sole

continental great power.16

Maisky thought the colonial question would provide extremely fertile ground for

Anglo-American contradictions. The United States would practice a new type of

"dynamic imperialism" that would challenge Great Britain’s "weakening conservative

imperialism." Maisky emphasized that the Soviet Union had not paid careful attention

to this question, which would be one of the most important issues after the war. So it

was necessary to be prepared. Furthermore, it was highly likely that the development of

conflicts between London and Washington in the colonial world would depend on the

Soviet Union's position. Maisky did not make precise proposals about the Middle East,

but he did underline that this area was favorable ground on which to strengthen Soviet

influence. In his mind, this goal should be a priority of Soviet diplomacy after the war.

The Options

16 On these different Soviet conceptions of the postwar order see Silvio Pons, "In the Aftermath of the Age of Wars: the Impact of World War II on Soviet Security Policy," in Silvio Pons, Andrea Romano, eds.. Russia in the Age of Wars, 1914-1945 (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2000); Aleksei M. Filitov, "Problems of Post-War Construction in Soviet Foreign Policy Conceptions during World War II," The Soviet Union and Europe in the Cold War, 1943-1953 (London: Macmillan Press, 1996); Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin's Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996); Vojtech Mastny, The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity. The Stalin Years (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Geoffrey Roberts, "Litvinov's Lost Peace, 1941-1956," Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 4, No.2 (Spring 2002): 23-54; Vladimir O. Pechatnov, "The Big Three after World War II: New Documents on Soviet Thinking about Post-War Relations with the United States and Great Britain," Working Paper No. 13, Cold War International History Project (Washington D. C.: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1995).

7

Maisky’s reflections should be seen as the background to Moscow’s efforts to

formulate a policy towards the Arab world and Palestine. In the Middle East, which was

traditionally dominated by Great Britain, Moscow could support either the Arab

national movement or the Zionist project of a Jewish State in Palestine. However, since

it had been absent from the Middle East since 1917, the Soviet Union could not play a

significant role unless it first created a diplomatic network. Therefore, Moscow opened

an embassy in Cairo in 1943, a move Maisky orchestrated. The following year

Moscow opened embassies in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. The hope was that Soviet

representatives would meet local political figures, obtain first hand information, and

exert influence.

If the Soviets chose the Arab option, that would mean support for the project of

creating a pan-Arab federation. But Soviet diplomats were very suspicious of this idea.

In 1943 the first secretary of the Soviet embassy in Ankara sent a report to Moscow

stating that the pan-Arab federation was more the result of the will of British than of

Arab political circles. London promoted this project to strengthen its domination of the

Middle East, but the United States opposed this federation.17 Several weeks later,

another diplomat argued that the Soviet attitude toward the creation of a pan-Arab

federation should be negative: "It will strike a blow to our interests."18

Soviet diplomats viewed the development of a pan-Arab movement not only as

a product of Anglo-American rivalry but also as a tool to prevent Moscow from

developing any influence in the Middle East. However, after the creation of the Arab

League in 1945, the Soviet ambassador in Baghdad suggested that criticism of the

League be softened, since it was popular among the public. It would be more fruitful,

he argued, to try to turn the League toward supporting Soviet interests. However,

Moscow remained suspicious of this British inspired organization. Thus, in 1945, the

Soviet Union in effect had no "Arab policy." In the Palestinian case what could

constitute a pro-Arab policy? The question was instead whether or not Moscow would

support the creation of a Jewish state.

Despite its hostility towards the Arab League, the Soviet Union did not

immediately join the Zionist side, as it believed that the costs of such a choice would

17 8 October 1943. Arkhiv Vneshnei Politiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii (Archive of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation, AVPRF), f. 087, o. 7, p. 5, d. 12, ll. 153-154. 18 2 March 1944. AVPRF, f. 087, o. 7, p. 5, d. 12, l. 7.

8

outweigh the benefits. In 1943, a Soviet diplomatic report concluded that the USSR

should not support the Zionist project because such a move could be interpreted as an

attack against the British Empire. However, it expressed doubts about Jewish-Arab

coexistence in a state dominated by the Arabs.19

"Wait and See"

In November 1944 the Soviet Foreign Ministry’s Middle East

Department sent a memorandum to the deputy commissar of foreign affairs, V.

Dekanozov, about the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine that noted:

Zionist organizations in Palestine are making every effort to establish links with our missions in the Middle East, reckoning that they will gain the support of the USSR for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. However rendering such support will undoubtedly evoke an unfavorable reaction from the Arab population, not only in Palestine but also in all other Arab countries. Moreover, the British, in view of the recent assassination of Lord Moyne20 in Cairo, are at present disinclined to promise anything that would alter the existing status of Palestine as a mandated territory. We have considerable property interests in Palestine, namely that of the former Russian government, the Ecclesiastical Mission, and the Palestine Society, which ought to be returned to the Soviet state. A successful resolution of this question can be reached only if the British attitude is favorable, since they are in charge of this property at present. Taking account of this, it would not be to our advantage at present to make any promises of support for the Jews, which the British would take as a move against them.21

The Soviets clearly did not want to strike a blow at the British Empire before the

end of war. The Foreign Ministry did not express any ideological opposition to

Zionism; its position was more tactical than principled. Yet contacts between Soviet

diplomats and Zionist representatives continued. During a meeting with Nahum

Goldmann in August 1944, Soviet Ambassador to Mexico K. Umanski declared that

personally as a "Russian and a Jew," not as ambassador, he believed that his country

would support a Jewish state in Palestine.22 Eliahu Epstein, who during the summer

1944 met several times with Soviet Counselor Daniil Solod, had the impression that

Moscow "wanted to know more about us than they did in the past." He recommended

19 8 October 1943. AVPRF, f. 087, o. 7, p. 5, d. 12, l 143, 152. 20 Lord Moyne was the British Minister in the Middle East from January 1944 to November 1944. 21 25 November 1944. AVPRF, f. 087, o. 7, p. 5, d. 12, ll. 88-91. 22 15 August 1944. DISR, Part I, pp. 79-80.

9

that Ben Gurion pursue relations with the USSR "even if these ties have so far produced

meager concrete results."23

At the Yalta Conference of February 1945 the Palestinian issue was not

officially on the agenda. According to various sources, Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill

discussed the issue, but the available versions of what occurred are contradictory.24

The Soviet vote in favor of a resolution passed at the Conference of the World

Federation of Trade Unions in London in February 1945 did support Moscow's growing

interest in the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine. This resolution claimed that the

United Nations had a responsibility to protect Jews the world over against oppression,

discrimination, and displacement, and that the Jewish people must be allowed to

continue to construct a national homeland in Palestine.25 However, the Soviet vote in

favor of this resolution did not signal definatively that Moscow supported the creation

of a Jewish State. As the Soviet consul in Beirut stated to a Zionist delegation, "the

Soviet government is not becoming pro-Zionist, it will clarify its position when the

Palestine question eventually comes up at the United Nations."26

A Trusteeship for Palestine

By the end of World War II Moscow had not yet taken an official position on

the future of Palestine. However, a report on the issue by Litvinov's postwar planning

commission indicated that the Soviets had opted for a change in policy. Instead of the

British mandate system, the commission proposed establishing a temporary Soviet

trusteeship—justified because the USSR was free of both Arab and Jewish influence—

until a more permanent solution of the problem could be found. "If the Soviet claim is

rejected, then the question inevitably arises of the transfer of Palestine to the collective

trusteeship of the three states—the USSR, the US, and Great Britain."27 But this

proposal had no chance of being accepted by London and Washington. Neither Western

power would countenance Soviet interference in the Palestine issue. During the

23 3 September 1944. DISR, Part I, p. 84. 24 Michel Bar-Zohar, Ben Gourion (Paris: Fayard, 1986):196; Joseph Heller, "Roosevelt Stalin and the Palestine Problem at Yalta," The Wiener Library Bulletin, No. 41-42, 1977, p. 35. 25 Aharon Cohen, Israel and the Arab World (London: W. H. Allen, 1970): 363; 25 February 1945, DISR, Part I, p. 92. 26 Yaacov Ro'i, Soviet Decision-Making in Practice. The USSR and Israel, 1947-1954 (New Brunswick/ London: Transaction Books, 1980): 18. 27 13 March-28 July 1945. AVPRF, f. 013, o. 7b, p. 9, d. 17, l. 115.

10

conference of foreign ministers held in London from 11 September to 2 October,

Molotov suggested to British Foreign Secretary Ernst Bevin that Soviet troops in

Northern Iran withdraw in exchange for the withdrawal of British forces in Egypt and

Palestine—a proposal Bevin rejected.28

London wanted to prevent the internationalization of the Palestine issue, as that

would mean the end of its hegemony in the Middle East and an opening of the gates to

Soviet influence. But Great Britain could not avoid involving the United States, which

had significant domestic interest in the problem of Jewish displaced persons in Europe.

Moreover, the problem of displaced persons was a significant challenge for Allied

armies in Germany and Austria. After receiving a report on the issue, US President

Harry Truman contacted British Prime Minister Clement Attlee to request that the

British government lift the strict limitations it had imposed on immigration since the

publication of the White Paper in 1939, and instead permit the immigration to Palestine

of 100,000 Jewish displaced persons. In response, the British prime minister proposed

the establishment of an Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on the Fate of European

Jews. The Committee was created in January 1946, and under American pressure

extended its activity to the Palestine issue.

The work of the Committee signaled the failure of the Kremlin's "wait and see"

strategy: since the Middle East would remain closed to Moscow. In the following years,

the goal of Soviet diplomacy was, therefore, to put an end to the British mandate and to

internationalize the Palestine issue. The year 1946 was thus a turning point for Soviet

policy toward the Palestine problem. Even though the United States and Great Britain

prevented the USSR from playing a significant role on the issue, the Soviets were

determined to get back into the game by other means. The new tactic they adopted was

based on the well-known Soviet policy of attempting to destabilize the Western powers

and "exploit imperialist contradictions."

Exploiting the imperialist contradictions

Molotov believed that Palestine was an issue that divided London and

Washington. In 1946 Soviet ambassador to Washington N. Novikov (who had opened

the Soviet mission in Cairo in 1943) dispatched to Moscow a "long telegram"—

28 Yaacov Ro'i, op. cit., p. 20.

11

reminiscent of George F. Kennan’s in the opposite direction a few months before—

about US foreign policy. In actuality, Motolov was the real inspiration for this hard line

text that described US foreign policy as "reflecting the imperialist tendencies of

American monopolistic capital…characterized in the postwar period by a striving for

world supremacy."29

According to the Novikov cable, Great Britain "faces enormous economic and

political difficulties" due to the war. "The foundations of the British Empire were

appreciably shaken and crises arose, for example in India, Palestine, and Egypt."30

While the United States and Great Britain had reached an agreement on the Far East,

Novikov emphasized, they failed to do so in the Near East where "the United States is

not interested in providing assistance and support to the British Empire in this

vulnerable point but rather in its own more thorough penetration of the Mediterranean

basin and the Near East, to which the United States is attracted by the area's natural

resources, primarily oil."31

In this context, Novikov considered Palestine "an example of the very acute

contradictions in the policy of the United States and England in the Near East." The US

demand that the UK permit the immigration of 100,000 Jewish displaced persons was

not, he stated, the result of sympathy for the Zionist cause. Rather, it "signifies that

American capital wishes to interfere in Palestinian affairs and thus penetrate the

economy. The selection of a port in Palestine as one of the terminal points of the

American oil pipeline explains a great deal regarding the foreign policy of the United

States on the Palestine question."32 The Soviet diplomat concluded, "The Near East

will become a center of Anglo-American contradictions that will explode the

agreements now reached between the United States and England."33 But he pointed out

that the strengthening of US positions in the Near East signified the emergence of a

new threat to the security of the southern regions of the Soviet Union. Despite this

danger, however, these Anglo-American “contradictions” created an opportunity for

Moscow to re-enter the Middle East game. The Kremlin decided to put the Jewish

displaced persons issue to its own use since this question was a major source of tension

29 For the text of the Novikov telegram, see Diplomatic History, Vol. 15, No. 4, 1991, p. 525. 30 Ibid, p. 528. 31 Ibid, p. 532. 32 Ibid, p. 533.

12

between Truman and Attlee, and between London and the Zionist leaders. Ultimately

the Soviets hoped that Western public opinion would undermine the British position.

Jewish Displaced Persons

From 1945 to 1948, the number of Jewish displaced persons in Allied refugee

camps in Germany and Austria increased from 70,00 to 250,000. Officially, most of

these people came from Poland, but in actuality they had been recently repatriated to

Poland from the USSR. In July 1945, according to an agreement between the Soviet

Union and Poland, all Poles (Jews and non-Jews) living in the USSR who had been

Polish citizens before 19 September 1939 were permitted to return to their homeland.

More than 150,000 Polish Jews living in Soviet Central Asia could benefit from this

agreement.34 According to Yaacov Ro'i, before repatriation began, there were

approximately 50,000 Jews left in Poland.35 From 6 July to the 31 December 1945,

22,058 Polish Jews left the Soviet Union36 for Poland and 173,420 more left from 1

January to 1 August 1946, when repatriation ended.37 Altogether, almost 200,000

Polish Jews left the Soviet Union in 1946, and 150,000 Jews left Poland for the Western

occupation zones in Germany and Austria.38

Originally, Moscow organized the repatriation of Polish Jews so that they could

participate in the reconstruction of Poland. This was done despite the opposition of the

general secretary of the Polish Communist Party, Wladislaw Gomulka, who was aware

of the hostile feelings of the Polish population towards the Jews.39 If the reconstruction

of Poland had been the sole goal of the Kremlin, however, the repatriation would have

been stopped because of the massive departure to the DP camps. But nothing like that

happened. On the contrary, following the pogrom at Kielce in July 1946 and other anti-

33 Ibid, p. 535. 34 Raul Hilberg, La destruction des Juifs d'Europe (Paris: Fayard, 1988): 986. 35 Yaacov Ro'i, Soviet Decision, op. cit., p. 28. 36 Yosef Litvak, "Polish-Jewish Refugees Repatried from the Soviet Union at the End of the Second World War," in Norman Davies and Antony Polonsky, eds., Jews in Eastern Poland and in the USSR, 1939-1946 (London: Macmillan): 232. 37 Ibid, p. 235. 38 Raul Hilberg, op. cit., p. 995. 39 Yosef Litvak, op. cit., p. 229.

13

Semitic incidents, there was a new wave of westward emigration; between June and

September 1946, 63,000 Jews left Poland.40

Such mass emigration from areas under the Soviet Army’s control was not

possible without explicit or tacit Soviet agreement. A report to the Soviet Foreign

Ministry from Lt.-General Golubev confirms that these movements were carefully

monitored by Moscow. The report indicated that the Soviets were aware that Polish

Jews wanted to travel to Palestine through Czechoslovakia, the Soviet zone of Austria,

and the American occupation zone in Germany.41 Foreign Ministry officials sent this

information to the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs V. Dekanozov, recommending

that no Soviet diplomat "become involved in any matters involving the departure of

Jews to Palestine."42

The growing number of displaced persons in Allied camps required that a

solution be found. Since the doors of the United States were closed to mass emigration,

these survivors of the Holocaust had no choice but to go to Palestine. While

Washington thus favored this solution, London was against it because it threatened to

alienate the Arab world. This difference of opinion was highly desirable for the

Kremlin, as it enabled it to play its favorite game: dividing the "imperialist powers."

Officially, the USSR remained hostile to mass Jewish emigration to Palestine.43

In actuality, however, Moscow contributed to increasing the number of Jewish

displaced persons by supporting the position of the Polish government on the issue.

From Warsaw’s perspective, helping these Jews to emigrate to a Jewish state would

eliminate the need to deal with property claims from Jews who were returning to

Poland only to find their property now in the hands of Poles. Moreover, Polish

communist authorities were searching for international legitimacy and support,

particularly for Poland's post-war boundaries, and hoped that the Jewish Agency and

the future Israel would lobby the United States on behalf of the Polish government.44

In 1948, 220,000 of 250,000 Jewish displaced persons in Europe came from the

Soviet sphere of influence: Poland (150,000), Czechoslovakia (5,000), Romania

40 Ibid, p. 230. 41 SIO, t. 1, p. 161. 42 SIO, t. 1, pp. 164-165. 43 15 May 1946. AVPRF, f. 018, o. 8, p. 7, d. 92, l. 9. 44 Albert Stankowski, "Poland and Israel: Bilateral Relations, 1947-1953 (based on the Archives of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs)" Jews in Eastern Europe, 3 (37), 1998, pp. 5-7.

14

(40,000), and Hungary (25,000). Out of the 250,000 Jewish DP, 142,000 went to

Palestine.45 Thus, the Soviet Union played a decisive role in the Palestine issue. As

David Wahl, an American Zionist leader, reported in a letter to the Rabbi Silver:

Were I to review my experience of the past year and a half with the displaced persons problem, I would have to report in all fairness that it was the cooperation of the Soviet government in repatriating many thousands of Polish Jews that made it possible to build up the Jewish DP population now in Germany from 70,000 at war's end, to almost a quarter of a million at the present time, and certainly no one will gainsay that the pressure of this large Jewish DP population is of inestimable value to the Zionist cause with respect to increasing immigration to Palestine and building towards a Jewish majority in Palestine.46

An Independent and Democratic Palestine

On 13 April 1946 the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry published a report

recommending the transfer of 100,000 Jews to Palestine and the continuation of the

British mandate until the United Nations reached an agreement on a UN trusteeship.

After the report was published, the Soviet Union could no longer remain silent on the

issue. In a memorandum sent to Andrei Vyshinskii, Soviet Commissar for Foreign

Affairs, Dekanozov, the chief of the Middle East Department of the Soviet Foreign

Ministry, stressed the danger of Soviet silence on the Palestine issue, arguing "it could

be interpreted by the US, Britain, the Arabs, and the Jews as a degree of compliance on

the part of the Soviet Union with the Committee's proposals." Therefore, he proposed a

position that consisted of four points: first, rejecting the conclusions of the Anglo-

American committee; second, opposing Jewish immigration to Palestine "since only the

complete destruction of all the roots of fascism and the democratization of the European

countries can give the Jewish masses normal living conditions; third, ending the British

mandate and withdrawal of foreign troops; and fourth, a UN trusteeship until the

formation of an independent and democratic Palestine. However, he suggested that the

Arabs, not the USSR, must raise the Palestine question at the UN.47

The proposed Soviet solution excluded the creation of a Jewish state. It was

difficult to imagine that one year later Moscow would be the most resolute advocate of

the Zionist project. During the summer of 1946, the idea of partition returned to the

45 Raul Hilberg, op. cit, p. 993-995. 46 15 May 1947. Published in Mezhdunarodnaia Zhizn', No.10 (Moscow)1998, pp. 84-85.

15

agenda. On the British side, the Morrison-Grady Plan, presented to the House of

Commons on 31 July 1946, proposed a partition of Palestine into four zones: two

autonomous zones, one Arab and one Jewish, with the holy places and the Negev under

British rule. London would also keep control of the Ministries of Defense and Foreign

Affairs. The Zionist leadership rejected this plan, proposing instead to create a "viable

Jewish state in an adequate area of Palestine." In other words, the Zionist movement did

not demand the whole of Palestinian territory and accepted partition. The United States

supported the Zionist version of partition but rejected the British one. The Soviet

Foreign Ministry, however, considered the partition solution highly problematic, since

it would give Great Britain complete control over Palestine "for an indefinite period."

Suspicious that London sought long-term control, Moscow’s position remained a

demand for the withdrawal of British troops, the end of the mandate, and the

establishment of an independent and democratic Palestine through a trusteeship under

the UN umbrella.48

At the same time, contacts between Soviet diplomats and Zionist representatives

continued. In Cairo TASS correspondents emphasized to a Zionist envoy that they were

"very impressed with the Zionist collective settlements," and even that "Russia must

find some type of understanding with the Arabs, but knowing their backwardness and

your progressiveness all our sympathy will be with your experiment."49 Other meetings

took place in the East European countries. Between May and June 1946, Vladimir

Yakovlev, counselor at the Soviet embassy in Warsaw, received several Zionist

delegations.50

In a memorandum sent to Vyshinskii, Ambassador to Poland Viktor Lebedev

summed up his first meeting with representatives of two Zionist parties, Poale Zion and

Hashomer Hatsair: the Zionist delegates hoped to arrange a visit to the USSR to inform

Soviet leaders about the situation in Palestine and to gain the Soviet government’s

support for the creation of a Jewish State.51 However, even though Poale Zion and

4715 May 1946. AVPRF, f. 018, o. 8, p. 7, d. 92, ll. 7-10. 48 AVPRF, f. 0118, o. 2, p. 2, d. 7, ll. 9-11. 6 September 1946, SIO, t. 1, p. 164. 49 CZA S25/486, 1 January 1946 and 1 February 1946, DISR, Part I, p. 118, p. 24. 50 See Iurii Strizhov, “The Soviet Position on the Establishment of the State of Israel,” in Yaacov Ro’i, ed., Jews and Jewish Life in Russia and the Soviet Union (London: Frank Cass, 1995): 306-307. 51 AVPRF, f. 07, o. 12a, p. 42, d. 6, ll. 42-43, 12 July 1946, secret, SIO, t. 1, pp. 156-157.

16

Hashomer Hatsair were the Zionist parties most favorable to the Soviet Union, Moscow

remained suspicious. On 7 July 1946, Yakovlev asked Levite of Poale Zion for a

memorandum on Palestine, explaining that the Soviet leadership would examine the

issue in a new light.52 Later, the Soviet diplomat expressed his doubts about the

viability of a bi-national state, the solution most favored by the Hashomer Hatsair.

At the begining of 1947, the Soviet Union finally took a clear stand on the future

of Palestine. Moscow was a step closer to its objective when in February 1947 Ernst

Bevin announced the transfer of the Palestine issue to the United Nations. The USSR

would have room to maneuver and a forum in which to express its voice. Yet, Soviet

diplomacy also interpreted this decision as a "very adroit diplomatic maneuver" by

Great Britain to maintain "its presence and its troops in Palestine."53 The Near East

Department of the Soviet UN delegation accordingly stated in March 1947 that the

Soviet Union did not envision the creation of a Jewish State but rather a "single

independent democratic Palestine that ensures that the peoples living there will enjoy

equal national and democratic rights."54

In other words, the USSR supported the bi-national solution, which was

rejected by all within the Zionist camp except the Jewish Palestinian communists, the

Hashomer Hatsair, and certain other individuals. The Arab Palestinian communists

favored coexistence with the Jews in a single state, but they refused to share power in a

bi-national framework. Moscow finally gave up on the UN trusteeship solution as

"neither the Arabs nor the Jews will agree" to it. In the days prior to Gromyko's speech

at the UN on 14 May, the Soviet position did not change, even on the immigration

issue. Moscow maintained that the Jewish question in Europe could not be resolved by

emigration to Palestine but "only [by] the complete eradication of all the roots of

fascism and full democratization of [the] Western European countries."55

The Surprise

On 28 April 1947 a Special Session of the UN General Assembly opened in

New York. The USSR’s deputy minister of foreign affairs, Andrei Gromyko, received

52 Yaacov Ro'i, op. cit., p. 32. 53 AVPRF, f. 07, o. 12a, p. 42, d. 6, ll. 134-141, 6 March 1947, SIO, t. 1, p. 189. 54 14 March 1947. AVPRF, f. 018, o. 9, p. 17, d. 77, l. 1. 55 AVPRF, f. 118, o. 5, p. 3, d. 1, ll. 1-14.

17

instructions from Moscow to prepare a speech that would present a completely new line

on the Palestine question. On the grounds that during World War II "the Jewish people

experienced unparalleled disaster and suffering," Gromyko was told to propose two

different solutions: the creation of a bi-national state, or the partition of Palestine

should the first solution proved impracticable because of the deterioration in Jewish-

Arab relations.56 Soviet diplomats in Washington and New York also asked for

information and material from American Jewish and Zionist organizations.57

Gromyko’s speech on 14 May was one of the most stunning pronouncements in

the history of Soviet diplomacy. The representative of a resolutely anti-Zionist country

delivered an address that could have been made by an ardent advocate of the Zionist

cause:

During the last war, the Jewish people experienced exceptional sorrow and suffering. Without any exaggeration, [one can say] this sorrow and suffering are indescribable. It is difficult to express them in dry statistics on the Jewish victims of the fascist aggressors. The Jews in territories where the Hitlerites held sway were subjected to almost complete physical annihilation. [...] Large numbers of the surviving Jews of Europe were deprived of their countries, their homes, and their livelihood. Hundred of thousands of Jews are wandering about in various countries of Europe in search of livelihood and in search of shelter. A large number of them are in camps for displaced persons and are still suffering great privations.

Gromyko then explained why the Jewish people had the right to establish their

own state:

Past experience, particularly during World War II, shows that no Western European state was able to provide adequate assistance for the Jewish people in defending its rights and its very existence from the violence of the Hitlerites and their allies. This is an unpleasant fact, but unfortunately, like all other facts, it must be admitted. [This fact] ...explains the aspirations of the Jews to establish their own state. It would be unjust not to take this into consideration and to deny the right of the Jewish people to realize this aspiration."58

56 23 October 1947. AVPRF, f.018, o. 9, p. 17, d. 77, l. 27. 57 DISR, Part I, pp. 187-188. 58 United Nations, Official Records of the First Special Session of the General Assembly, Vol. I, 28 April-15 May 1947, pp. 127-135.

18

Gromyko thus revealed the Soviet position on Palestine: either the establishment of a

democratic Arab-Jewish state or the partition of Palestine into two independent states.

Gromyko's speech was an unexpectedly radical move. The deputy minister of

foreign affairs used concepts such as "the Jewish people" that had been repudiated by

Lenin and Stalin since the early days of the Bolshevik party. Zionist leaders such as

Abba Eban naturally welcomed the new Soviet orientation: "Such a position was an

incredible opportunity; in a moment all of our plans on the discussion at the UN were

completely changed."59 But they did not have any guarantee with regard to whether the

USSR would actually stand in favor of partition. The growing Cold War tension

potentially could change everything. Even American diplomats believed that in the end

Moscow would support the Arab side.60

However, during the summer of 1947 Soviet diplomats sent a number of positive

signs to the Zionist representatives. The first secretary of the Soviet embassy in

Washington, M. Vavilov, stated to E. Epstein that the Soviet government was well

aware of the Yishuv capitalist social structure but believed that the Jews were building a

peaceful, democratic, and progressive community in Palestine.61 He also emphasized

that the Soviet government was satisfied with the reaction of Jews all over the world to

Gromyko's speech. As it had during World War II, Moscow clearly expected to gain

influence among Jews, particularly in America, at a moment when growing tension

between the East and West was leading to the division of the world into two blocks.

In September, Epstein asked a member of Soviet UN delegation, S. Tsarapkin, if

Moscow would vote for the bi-national solution supported by the minority of UNSCOP

(India, Iran, and particularly Yugoslavia). 62 "Not necessarily," replied Tsarapkin.63

Actually, the decision had been made as early as April. As Molotov explained to

Vyshinskii on 30 September 1947, he had instructed his deputy minister "not to raise

any objection to the opinion of the majority of the committee on the partition of

59 Abba Eban, Autobiography (Paris: Buchet / Chastel, 1979): 62. 60 Yaacov Ro'i, op. cit., p. 83. 61 DISR, Part I, p. 217. 62 United Nations Special Committee on Palestine. This committee was created on 15 May 1947 in order to study the situation in Palestine and present its conclusions to the General Assembly in September. The Soviet Union proposed that all Great Powers would be represented in the Committee but this proposal was defeated. The eleven UNSCOP members were Australia, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Guatemala, India, Iran, The Netherlands, Peru, Sweden, Uruguay and Yugoslavia. 63 DISR, Part I, p. 222.

19

Palestine" and "not to object to recommendations passed unanimously by the committee

about the mandate, the granting of independence to Palestine."64 The same day Molotov

sent further instructions in a ciphered telegram: Vyshinskii should "support the majority

opinion [of UNSCOP], which corresponds to our basic opinion on this issue," and

should keep in mind that Gromyko had suggested the creation of a bi-national state only

for "tactical considerations, since we did not want to take the initiative on the creation

of a Jewish state."65

Molotov's telegram suggests that the Soviet decision to support the creation of a

Jewish state had been taken by the end of April 1947. However, it is not possible to

know whether Stalin and Molotov had made this decision even earlier. The Foreign

Ministry apparatus had been informed of the decision only a few days before

Gromyko's speech, and was thus obliged to reconsider almost completely its previous

line.

In Favor of Partition

On 13 October 1947 Tsarapkin delivered a speech at the UN explaining the

Soviet choice in favor of partition. Two days later Molotov instructed Vyshinskii to

consult the Jews on "all important questions concerning Palestine, in particular on

Jerusalem” and to “try to reduce the transition period, during which Britain must not be

left in charge. It would be better to aim at transferring authority to the UN Security

Council.” Furthermore, Molotov directed the Soviet delegation to support the

Uruguayan proposal to allow the emigration to Palestine of 30,000 Jewish children as

well as a quota for their parents in DP camps,66 and the Colombian proposal allowing

the immigration of 150,000 Jews.67 The delegation was also instructed to support the

Yugoslav proposal that all Jewish refugees now in camps on the island of Cyprus be

admitted to Palestine immediately, regardless of quotas.68 The USSR was becoming an

ardent supporter of the Zionist cause.

On 26 October 1947 Molotov sent Stalin a 10-point memorandum, drafted by

Vyshinskii, regarding the transition period between the end of the British mandate and

64 23 October 1947. AVPRF, f. 018, o. 9, p. 17, d. 77, l. 27. 65 SIO, t. 1, pp. 251-252. 66 23 October 1947. AVPRF, f. 018, o. 9, p. 17, d. 77, l. 27. 67 SIO, t. 1, pp. 253.

20

the partition of Palestine. Vyshinkii favored a speedy British withdrawal from

Palestine. He proposed ending the mandate as of 1 January 1948 and replacing it with a

Special Commission of the UN Security Council that would be responsible for setting

the borders of the future Arab and Jewish states and for establishing provisional

governments. This proposal was probably designed for tactical reasons. Since the

United States would never have agreed to share responsibility for Palestine with the

Soviet Union, Moscow was instead looking for a way to be directly involved in the

Palestinian issue. According to Vyshinskii, all of these proposals were in accord with

those of the Jewish Agency.69

On 29 November 1947 the USSR voted in favor of the plan to partition Palestine

and create both a Jewish State and an Arab State. Resolution 181 of the UN General

Assembly passed with 33 in favor, 13 against, and 10 abstentions, including, notably,

Yugoslavia. The USSR ensured “yes” votes by Byelorussia, Ukraine, Poland, and

Czechoslovakia, which were necessary since a two-thirds majority was required to pass

the resolution. The creation of Jewish State in Palestine required that the United States

and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its satellites, vote the same way despite the

escalating Cold War. In the emerging bipolar confrontation, the Zionist project could

only succeed because the interests of the two superpowers temporarily coincided on this

issue.

During World War II, the USSR had been reluctant to undermine the empire of

its British ally, but the post-war division of the powers into two antagonistic blocs was

creating a new situation. In this environment, Moscow’s goal became to weaken Great

Britain and "exploit the contradictions between London and Washington." It should be

pointed out that Soviet diplomacy endorsed this new line on the Palestinian issue at the

end of April 1947, immediately after Truman's speech in March setting forth

containment policy, and after the failure of the Council of Foreign Ministers in Moscow

in April. The Palestine issue thus provided Moscow with an opportunity to strike a

blow at a place of strategic importance to the British Empire, and to exacerbate the

Anglo/American divide over the Jewish DP issue.

American Fears

68 23 October 1947. AVPRF, f. 018, o. 9, p. 17, d. 77, l. 28.

21

The partition plan was immediately threatened by Arab opposition, American

hesitations, and above all by the outburst of violence in Palestine. This "war before the

war" strengthened the opponents of the partition plan, but Moscow did not consider any

other policy. The reason, apparently, was that the Soviets benefited from American

reluctance and from the tension between the Zionist movement and Washington.

The United States did not want to intervene to maintain order in Palestine. But

above all, Washington feared that the implementation of the partition plan would

provide Moscow an avenue to become a strategic player in the Middle East, which was

a greater concern than the hypothetical threat from the oil-producing Arab countries.

US diplomat George Kennan argued in a long memorandum in January 1948, the

United States should change its policy on the Palestine issue because the partition plan

would provide the Soviet Union an opportunity to send troops into Palestine. Soviet

troops would be used to maintain order, but their presence would enable Moscow to

infiltrate its agents for subversive activities, spread propaganda, and attempt to

overthrow Arab governments and replace them with "people’s republics." By

stationing troops in Palestine, the Soviets would outflank the American positions in

Greece, Iran, and Turkey, and potentially threaten the stability of the entire Eastern

Mediterranean.70

According to Kennan, the Soviet Union had secretly delivered arms to both

Jews and Arabs in order to intensify the conflict. He noted insightfully that the UN

partition plan favored Soviet goals, which were to divide and destabilize the non-

communist countries. These fears, together with the outburst of violence in Palestine,

led to a remarkable turnabout in American diplomacy. On 19 March 1948 US

Ambassador to the UN Warren Austin declared that the partition plan could not be

implemented peacefully and proposed instead a provisional trusteeship.71 The

American and Soviet positions had thus reversed. In 1945 the USSR had been in favor

of a UN trusteeship while the US opposed it, and now, on the eve of the creation of a

Jewish state, Washington apparently adopted the trusteeship solution while Moscow

stood firmly against it. On 30 March Gromyko declared to the Security Council:

69 26 October 1947. AVPRF, f. 06, o. 9, p. 22, d. 267, ll. 12-13. 70 Report by the Policy Planning Staff on Position of the United States with Respect to Palestine, FRUS, 19 January 1948, Vol. 5, Part 2 (Washington: United States Printing Office): 546-554. 71 On this issue see Michael J. Cohen, Truman and Israel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990): 188-197.

22

the only way to reduce bloodshed is the prompt and effective creation of two states in Palestine. If the United States and some other states block the implementation of the partition and regard Palestine as an element in their economic and military-strategic considerations, then any decision on the future of Palestine, including the establishment of a trusteeship regime, will mean the transformation of Palestine into a field of strife and dissension between the Arabs and the Jews and will only increase the number of victims.72

Despite Soviet opposition, the Security Council adopted a resolution on 1 April

calling for the convening of a special session of the UN General Assembly on the issue

of Palestine's future government. On 9 April Molotov sent Stalin a draft of the latest

instructions for the Soviet UN delegation. The two main goals were to defend the

partition plan and to oppose the American trusteeship proposal.73 Throughout this

period, the Soviet Union stood firm rejecting all other proposals. In fact, in the period

following Gromyko's speech, the Soviet Union became the best and most constant ally

of the Zionist movement.

Arab Reaction

Several days before the vote on the partition plan, the Soviet chargé d'affaires in

Iraq, A. Sultanov, analyzed for Moscow the position in the Arab world on the Palestine

issue. According to Sultanov, Arab political circles were convinced that the Soviet

Union would not agree to the creation of a Jewish State. The Soviet decision was

therefore unexpected in the Arab world. Listing the positive and negative consequences

of Soviet support for partition, Sultanov emphasized that one positive consequence was

that the Soviet position in favor of partition "had aroused sympathy towards the USSR

from Jewry throughout the world, particularly in America.” Moreover, the creation of a

Jewish State could be “a factor for revolutionizing the Arab East."74

The revolutionizing potential of the creation of a Jewish state had rarely been

expressed by Soviet officials, but the idea could, in part, explain Moscow's support for

the Zionist cause. The modern political and social structures of the future Jewish state

could destabilize the backward social order of the Arab world. As Soviet representative

to the UN Yakob Malik told Abba Eban after weeks of war between Israel and the Arab

72 Yaacov Ro'i, op. cit., p. 119. 73 Mezhdunarodnaya Zhizn', No. 10, 1998, p. 89. 74 SIO, t. 1, p. 265.

23

states: "An event so drastic as losing the Palestine war could not pass the Arab world by

without leading to profound consequences and questioning of the popular character of

the regimes. We might therefore look forward to a period of increasing upheaval. […]

The economic and social effects of Israel’s development would have a profound

influence on the Middle East as a whole."75

However, according to A. Sultanov, the potential negative consequences of

Soviet support for the Jewish state outweighed the positive ones. He listed the risk of

alienating the Arab world, the reinforcement of the alliance between the Anglo-Saxons

and the reactionary leaders of the Arab League, the consolidation of an anti-Soviet

Muslim bloc made up of the Arab League, Turkey, and Pakistan, the repression of the

"democratic and revolutionary movement"—in other words, the Communist parties.

Furthermore, he pointed out that the "Zionist state could become a base for American

expansion" in the Middle East. The Arab states, "having lost faith in the support of the

Soviet Union, and being encouraged by the Anglo-Saxons, would use this circumstance

as a reason to enter directly into an openly anti-Soviet agreement with them on opening

more bases and strategic resources in case of war against us."76

In Moscow, however, Soviet leaders had taken into account these pessimistic

predictions, and calculated that the benefit of support to the Jewish state would be

higher than its cost. Thus, as Soviet diplomats received complaints from Arab leaders,

they did nothing to calm their anger. Instead, they reminded them of Moscow’s prior

support for Arab states against Great Britain and France. In December 1947, during a

meeting with Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs F. Gusev, the Egyptian ambassador to

Moscow declared that the Soviet Union should remain neutral on the Palestine issue.77

In May 1948, on the eve of the creation of Israel, the Egyptian ambassador asked

Moscow to revert to its previous stand in favor of a united and democratic state.78

Soviet Ambassador to Beirut Daniil Solod underlined that the United States was the

main enemy of the Arabs even if the Soviet position provoked a high degree of

confusion.79 The Soviet press published attacks against "Arab reactionaries associated

75DISR, Part I, pp. 317-318. 76 SIO, t. 1, p. 265. 77 17 December 1947. AVPRF, f. 087, o. 10, p. 13, d. 2, l. 22. 78 5 May 1948. AVPRF, f. 0106, o. 7, p. 8, d. 7, lll. 91-92. 79 10 May 1948. AVPRF, f. 0106, o. 7, p. 8, d. 7, l. 58.

24

with the imperialists," claiming they had had close ties with Hitler's Germany and

Mussolini's Italy during the war.80

Arab Communist Parties

Arab communist parties suffered the most serious consequences of Soviet

support for the Jewish state. After the dissolution of the Communist International in

May 1943, the Palestinian Communist Party was divided into Arab and Jewish groups.

The Arab group, named the League for National Liberation (LNL), had opposed any

partition of Palestine or a bi-national solution. The LNL was in favor of granting

Palestinian citizenship to all Jews who had immigrated to the country but not giving

any collective rights to the Jewish community, which was a coherent Marxist and anti-

Zionist position.

A leader of the LNL, Emil Tuma, sent a long handwritten letter to Moscow

criticizing Gromyko’s UN speech.81 The letter reached the International Department of

the CSPU(b) through the Ministry of State Security (MGB).82 Tuma made three main

points. First, "the speech aroused suspicion and distrust in the Arab world among the

wide Arab masses, and Arab reactionaries managed to throw doubt on the attitude of

the Soviet Union towards the Palestine problem, which is regarded as an integral part of

the Arab problem in the Middle East. [...] Gromyko’s statement has aroused great

speculation among communists. It has been badly received by the Arab masses and a

clarification would give hope not only to communists but to all Arab people in the

Middle East. The revolutionary potential in the Arab countries cannot be ignored in the

present international situation."83

Second, Tuma blamed Gromyko for having explained at length the Zionist

aspirations, while having "ignored completely the Arab people in Palestine, their

aspirations, their anti-imperialist national movement and their traditional associations

and bonds with the Arab people in the Middle East."84 Third, Tuma's main criticism of

Gromyko’s speech concerned its support for the Zionist cause:

80 Yaacov Ro'i, op. cit., p. 114-115. 81 RGASPI, f. 17, o. 128, d. 388, ll. 12-30. 82 Pochetov to Suslov, 6 November 1947. RGASPI, f. 17, o. 128, d. 1114, l. 31. 83 Ibid , l. 30. 84 Ibid, l. 18.

25

We have always fought against the Zionist conception and have viewed Zionism as an imperialist venture directed by British imperialism in order to create a Trojan horse in the Middle East. Consequently we have always discredited the historical claims of Zionism as reactionary and did not accept the historical roots of the Jews as realistic. [...] Comrade Gromyko by his statement has strengthened Zionist ideology and the Zionist grip over the Jewish masses. Such strengthening will help imperialism to continue to use the Jewish masses as instruments in its opposition to the liberation movements in the Arab Middle East.85

Tuma also criticized the Soviet diplomat for linking the Jewish refugee problem

with the future of Palestine. "We could not understand [this]. This is strange in view of

the fact that communists everywhere have disclaimed any connection [between the

two]. Communists have always put forward the democratic solution to this problem and

we have failed to see any reason why Comrade Gromyko should not refer to it when the

question of refugees is under discussion."86

Soviet support for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine thus created an

acutely difficult situation for the Arab communist movement, similar to what the

Communist parties in Europe suffered as a result of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact in

1939. Moscow’s new position created serious conflict between loyalty to Moscow and

loyalty to their own country and society. However, because of communist political

culture and the nature of relations between the communist parties and the center in

Moscow, open opposition was inconceivable.

Arab communists consequently endorsed the Soviet position even though they

had to face very negative consequences, including losing many of their members. From

August 1947 to June 1949, the roster of the Lebanese Communist Party fell from

12,000 to 3,500,87 while the Syrian party declined from 8,400 members to 4,50088—a

loss of between two-thirds and one half of their members.89 This decline in

membership stemmed not only from the parties’ position on Palestine, but also because

their clandestine activities prompted the Syrian and Lebanese governments to disband

them in reaction to the Soviet vote on Palestine. The price was even higher in Iraq;

85 Ibid, l. 23. 86 Ibid., l. 24. 87 2 August 1947. RGASPI, f. 17, o. 128, d. 387, l. 44. 88 2 August 1947. RGASPI f. 17, o. 128, d. 389, l. 65. 89 8 June 1949. RGASPI, f. 17, o. 137, d. 154, l. 55.

26

leaders of the Iraqi Communist Party were arrested, condemned to death, and executed

in February 1949.90

Military Support

"They saved the country; I have no doubt of that. The Czech arms deal was the

greatest help we then had, it saved us and without it I very much doubt if we could have

survived the first month."91 This retrospective statement by David Ben Gurion in 1968

shows the importance of Czech arms to the young Jewish state. After the UN session on

the Palestine issue in the spring of 1947, Ben Gurion regarded the acquisition of arms

as the highest priority and dispatched Jewish paramilitary forces—Haganah agents—

throughout the world to buy military equipment in order to prepare Jewish forces for

war.

Haganah’s mission became quite difficult when, in November 1947, the United

States imposed an arms embargo on Palestine and its neighboring states. American

doors thus being closed, the chief of the Jewish Agency looked to Eastern European

countries, in particular to Czechoslovakia. According to recently released Soviet and

Israeli documents, Prague initially refused to sell arms to the Zionist movement because

it was engaged in parallel negotiations with Egypt and Syria, which were also looking

to buy arms.92 Czech motives for selling arms were more economic than political; the

arms deal would provide much needed income. The Soviet Union opposed these

negotiations by Czechoslovakia. In a letter to Molotov, Deputy Foreign Minister V.

Zorin suggested that “given the position we have adopted on the Palestine question, it

would be possible to authorize Comrade Bodrov, when an opportunity arises, to draw

[Czech party leader Klement] Gottwald’s attention to the fact that the sale of weapons

by the Czechoslovak government to the Arabs under present conditions, when the

situation in Palestine is becoming more aggravated every day, could be used by the

90 Mohieddine Hadhri, “Essai sur l’histoire du parti communiste irakien : lutte nationales et stratégie internationaliste,” in René Gallissot, Mouvement ouvirer, communisme et nationalismes dans le monde arabe (Paris : Les éditions ouvrières, 1978): 217; M. S. Agwani, Communism in the Arab East (London : Asia Publishing House, 1969): 66-67. 91 Uri Bialer, Between East and West: Israel's Foreign Policy Orientation, 1948-1956 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 92 Mezhdunarodnaya Zhizn', No. 10, 1998, p. 87. On this issue see Rami Ginat, The Soviet Union and Egypt 1945-1955 (London : Frank Cass, 1993).

27

Anglo-Americans against the Soviet Union and the new democracies.”93 Zionist leaders

thus succeeded in their request that Moscow intervene to stop the delivery of Czech

arms to the Arabs.94

The communist coup in Prague in February 1948 had no negative effects on the

negotiations with the Jewish Agency. The new government delivered arms only to the

Zionist movement. Indeed, it organized an airlift under the code name Balak to

transport the military equipment to Palestine in the spring of 1948. A DC-3 took off

from the Zatec air base, then stopped over at Podgorica in Yugoslavia or in Corsica,

and landed in Ekron in Palestine. The Czechoslovak ministry of defense assigned a

group of technicians to accompany the airplane to repair it if needed. Since these

operations were conducted in violation of the UN Security Council Resolution

declaring an arms embargo of Palestine, Moscow feared their discovery. Thus, in a

memorandum to Deputy Foreign Minister Zorin, the chief of the Ministry’s Middle

East Department, I. Bakulin, advised a confidential intervention in Prague and Belgrade

to "let the Czechs and Yugoslavs know about the desirability of extending aid to the

representatives of the State of Israel in the purchase and dispatch to Palestine of

artillery and airplanes" and to conduct negotiations with the Israeli legation in Moscow

after its establishment. Zorin replied, however, that the Soviet Union could not "operate

with such lack of caution. After all, we voted for a truce in Palestine. We must refrain

from moves which could be used against us."95

From December 1947 to 15 May 1948, the Jewish Agency purchased about $13

million of heavy and light arms from Czechoslovakia. For the second half of 1948,

Prague granted Israel $12 million in credit to pay for the arms, of which Israel used

only $9 million. In all, the Jewish Agency and the Israeli government purchased about

$22 million worth of military supplies from Czechoslovakia, which also organized the

training of Israeli pilots and paratroopers. This military cooperation continued until

1951.

No Soviet Arms

93 Mezhdunarodnaya Zhizn', No. 10, 1998, p. 87. 94 DISR, Part I, p. 264. 95 5 June 1948. AVPRF, f. 089, o. 1, p. 1, d. 1, l. 3.

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As soon as they arrived in Moscow in September 1948, Israeli diplomats opened

talks with Soviet authorities about providing direct military aid. On 5 October 1948

Israeli military attaché Yohanan Ratner discussed training questions with General

Seraev, asking about Soviet military textbooks and possibilities for Israeli officers to

take advanced courses in the Soviet Union.96 A few days later, during a conversation

with Red Army General Aleksei Antonov, Ratner suggested officer-training courses

and the supply of German equipment that had fallen into Soviet hands. Antonov replied

by asking for a detailed list of the Israeli needs.97

On 7 November Ben Gurion sent such a list to Ratner, who submitted it on 11

November to Ivan Bakulin. The Jewish state wanted to purchase 45 T-34 tanks, 50

fighter planes, and anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns.98 Bakulin stated that he would

transmit the Israeli requests but emphasized the difficulties due to the UN embargo:

"True, others are violating this resolution,” he stated. “But if arms supplies from us are

discovered, there will be an uproar."99 After this meeting, Bakulin sent a memorandum

to Zorin suggesting that they officially reject the request because of the UN embargo.100

Golda Meyerson, the Israeli ambassador, asked Vyshinskii about this issue before his

departure to Jerusalem in April 1949. He answered that it was "a tricky and complex

problem, which could lead to a number of difficulties.101 According to Meyerson, the

Soviet foreign minister explained: "Suffice it for us to give a small pistol and it will be

said that we gave you an atom bomb. Moreover, there will be no end of interpretations

about the special dimension of this arrangement: an alliance between the Soviets and

the State of Israel, which has one thing in common — Karl Marx, the socialist and the

Jew; an alliance to attack and destroy the world."102

The Israeli request was in fact not sent to Stalin. As Bakulin explained to

Gromyko, the requests "had been raised by the Jews during the war in Palestine. At

present, since the end of the war and the stabilization of the situation in Palestine, the

Jews have not renewed them. Reckoning that the Jews did not make these military

96 DISR, Part I, p. 343. 97 Yaacov Ro'i, op. cit., p. 155. 98 DISR, Part I, p. 400. 99 Yaacov Ro'i, op. cit, p. 155. 100 November 1948. AVPRF, f. 089, o. 1, p. 1, d. 2, l. 24. 101 14 April 1949. AVPRF, f. 089, o. 2, p. 3, d. 4, l. 19. 102 DISR, Part I, p. 463.

29

requests seriously, we think it advisable to delay replying to them, and to raise with the

higher authorities [Stalin] only the matter of credit."103 In actuality, however, the Soviet

Union did not want to be involved in direct military cooperation with Israel.

Demographic Support

Israeli leaders believed that the future of their state depended on their acquiring

the traditional attributes of power: territory and population. Thanks to the Czech

military support, they could expand their territory, and thanks to the mass immigration

from Eastern Europe they could win the demographic war.

However, a distinction must be made between the periods before and after the

creation of Israel. Prior to 14 May 1948, Jewish immigration to Palestine was largely

illegal. From 1946 to mid-1948, 31,566 of the 61,023 new arrivals immigrated illegally.

After May 1948, Israel was free to conduct its own immigration policy. Prior to 1948,

the Soviet Union allowed the governments of Eastern Europe to negotiate with

emissaries of the Jewish Agency, and two-thirds of the immigrants came from Poland

and Romania.104 In 1945, even before the end of the war, Nahum Goldmann sent a

letter to Andrei Gromyko in Washington requesting exit visas for Romanian, Bulgarian,

and Hungarian citizens who had certificates to emigrate from the British administration

in Palestine.105 In mid-1946, the agents of the Mossad opened negotiations with the

Romanian authorities, in particular with Ana Pauker, unofficial leader of the Romanian

Communist Party, in order to gain consent for large-scale Jewish emigration. Bucharest

agreed to allow 50,000 Jews to leave, on the condition that the emigrants give up their

property and their money. Moreover, the Mossad had to pay a "poll tax" for each Jew

leaving Romania.106

In May 1946 the first ship, the Max Nordau, left Constanza for Palestine

carrying 1,700 Jewish immigrants. At the end of 1947, the Mossad tried to organize the

illegal immigration of 15,000 Jews aboard the Pan York and Pan Crescent. Because of

pressure by the United States, the two ships could not leave from Constanza, but instead

103 30 September 1949. AVPRF, f. 089, o. 2, p. 3, d. 14, l. 16. 104 These numbers must be interpreted cautiously since it is not possible to distinguish between the immigrants who came directly from Poland and Romania and those who came from DP camps. 105 DISR, Part I, p. 98. 106 Uri Bialer, op. cit., p. 80.

30

left from Burgas in Bulgaria.107 The Mossad negotiated also with Bulgaria, Hungary,

and Poland. Out of 60,000 immigrants who arrived in Palestine between 1946 and

1948, 80% came from Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary.

After 15 May 1948 there were no more restrictions on immigration to Israel.

Therefore, demographic support meant in essence contributing to the Israeli war effort

against the neighboring Arab states. During a UN Security Council session, a Soviet

representative spoke out against the continuing limitations on Jewish emigration,

stating "The question of immigration into the State of Israel is the domestic affair of the

State of Israel [...] Some delegates at the Council have argued that this immigration

threatens the security of Arab States. I want to point out that first of all that we do not

know of a single instance of incursion into the territory of another state by the armed

forces of Israel except out of self-defense, when they were compelled to repulse attacks

on Israeli territory by the armed forces of other states. This was self-defense in the full

sense of the word."108 From mid-1948 to the end of 1951, more than 300,000 Jews from

Eastern European countries arrived in Israel. This total represented half of all

immigration to Israel:

Romania 117,950 Poland 106,414 Bulgaria 37,260 Czechoslovakia 18,788 Hungary 14,324 Yugoslavia 7,661109

The negotiations with Romania proved to be a difficult issue. The agreement

reached between Ana Pauker and the Zionist representative Mordechai Namir in July

1948 specified that 5,000 Romanian Jews would be permitted to emigrate each month.

But Ana Pauker did not mention to Namir that restrictive criteria had been established.

A secret and unpublished criterion had been issued in March 1948 prohibiting

emigration to Jews who were skilled workers, doctors and engineers. Even though Ana

Pauker opposed such restrictions, this decision was taken because of the deterioration

107 On this issue see Idith Zertal, From Catastrophe to Power: Holocaust Survivors and the Emergence of Israel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), chapter III. 108 Yaacov Ro'i, op. cit., p. 238. 109 Marie-Pierre Rey, "Juifs et émigration juive dans la politique extérieure soviétique: handicap ou atout ?, 1917-1991," Historiens et Géographes, No. 322 (1991): 254.

31

of the Romanian economy. While the emigration was initially limited to unassimilated,

impoverished small traders, in 1947 all social groups began opting for emigration to an

unprecedented degree. The faction of the general secretary of the Romanian Communist

Party, Gheorghui Dej, stood against the emigration of Jews who were practicing vitally

needed professions within the Romanian economy.110

Romanian emigration ceased at the end of 1948, prompting Moshe Shertok to

raise the issue with Vyshinskii during a UN meeting in Paris in December. The Israeli

minister tried to convince him of the importance of this immigration: "This is our

largest reservoir of pioneering potential."111 Shertok asked Vyshinskii to act in

accordance with Soviet policy: "I do not want to make things easier for myself by

hiding the difficulties from you. The question is whether this issue is reconcilable with

the regime, but we assume that if there is a basic [Soviet] position that favors Israel,

then this permission to emigrate should be accepted." Vyshinskii replied, "I understand

your position and consider it to be justified from your point of view." But he also

added, "You say that you need these people and Romania can also say the same thing,

that they need these people."112

Vyshinskii nonetheless informed Shertok that his demand might be transmitted

to Stalin: "You mentioned at the outset of your remarks that you are not sure, or that

you would like to be sure, that when we took this stand, we did so bearing in mind all

the conclusions it entails. I cannot comment officially in this regard in the name of the

government, but I will say frankly in my own name, that as far as I am concerned, I

cannot say that I have drawn all the conclusions. What you say requires study,

consideration and decision. Your remarks will be conveyed to the government, to

Molotov, and perhaps even higher."113

"Even higher" could only mean Stalin, and Shertok thus wondered whether the

Soviet minister "went too far." Nonetheless, Israeli diplomats continued to refer to

Vyshinskii’s promise during their conversations with their Soviet counterparts. In April

1949, before returning to Israel, Golda Meyerson again raised the Romanian issue with

110 This account is based upon Robert Levy, "Ana Pauker and the Mass Emigration of Romanian Jewry, 1950-1952,” East European Jewish Affairs, Vol. 28, No. 1, 1998, pp. 69-86. This article is based on documents from the Romanian archives. 111 DISR, Part I, p. 415. 112 Ibid. 113 Ibid, p. 418.

32

Vyshinskii. The Soviet diplomat replied that Romania and Hungary were young

countries and needed the Jews because they "outdo all others in their loyalty to the new

regimes." Vyshinskii emphasized to Meyerson that "half a million loyal citizens is no

small thing,"114 but he did not report these words to Stalin.115

Israeli diplomats in Bucharest continued the negotiations in 1949, but without

success. However, the emigration of Jews from Romania resumed at the end of 1949,

more due to internal factors than to Soviet pressure. Because of the open agitation of

Romanian Jewry regarding restrictions on emigration, Bucharest decided to open the

gates. In 1950, 47,041 Romanian Jews emigrated to Israel in 1950, followed by 40,625

in 1951. The Stalinist minister of foreign affairs, Ana Pauker, was the most fervent

advocate of unrestricted Jewish emigration from Romania. In 1952, however, the mass

emigration again halted as a result of a new purge of the top leadership. Ana Pauker

was arrested in February 1953 and accused of serving as an agent of international

Zionism.116

In Hungary Israeli diplomats failed to negotiate the mass departure of Jews.

From mid-1948 to the end of 1949, only about 10,000 Jews emigrated illegally to Israel.

Moscow thus had no centralized policy regarding Jewish mass emigration from Eastern

European countries. The policy and the chronology were not the same in Bucharest as

in Warsaw, Sofia, or Budapest. The Soviet Union allowed the people’s democracies to

conduct their own policy. The emigration issue was highly sensitive for the new Soviet-

oriented regimes, since it could be problematic to admit Jewish emigration while

refusing permission to other citizens who were reluctant to participate in the

"construction of socialism." Such a policy might inflame anti-Semitism and weaken the

fragile legitimacy of these regimes. There is no doubt that the anti-Semitic character of

the purges during Stalin's last years are partly explained by the need to reinforce the

national legitimacy of the popular democracies. By instigating and exploiting latent

anti-Semitism, Soviet leaders tried to divert popular discontent onto Jews — such as

Ana Pauker or Rudolf Slansky, General Secretary of the Communist Party of

Czechoslovakia — who occupied positions in the top leadership of the Party and the

State.

114 DISR, Part I, p. 465. 115 14 April 1949. AVPRF, f. 089, o. 2, p. 3, d. 4, ll. 8-11. 116 Robert Levy, op. cit.

33

No Soviet Jews

The emigration of Soviet Jews was strictly prohibited from the very beginning.

According to Soviet data, 500 people were permitted to emigrate to Israel between 1945

and 1955.117 Israeli data indicates that 131 Jews left the Soviet Union for the Jewish

state between 1948 and 1955, with only nine of those leaving before Stalin's death in

1953.118 According to a memorandum sent to Molotov and Vyshinskii in April 1952,

out of 65 applications received by the Militia between 1948 and 1951, only ten were

granted.119 When Israeli diplomats arrived in Moscow in September 1948, Soviet

leaders made it clear that Soviet Jews were not interested in emigration to Israel.

During her first meeting with Deputy Foreign Minister V. Zorin, Golda Meyerson

stated that "the Jewish problem could be resolved only by a large Jewish immigration to

Israel." Zorin disagreed, arguing that most Jews would not emigrate to Israel but would

remain in their countries. In the USSR, a socialist country, Jews would never suffer

persecution and discrimination, and in the other countries the Jewish problem would be

solved only by struggling for democratization.

The same day, during another conversation with Golda Meyerson, the chief of

the Near East Department, I. Bakulin said that emigration would concern only Jews of

the "non-democratic countries," i. e. of the capitalist world.120 Israeli leaders avoided

raising directly the problem of mass emigration of Soviet Jews until 1951, cautiously

tackling initially only the question of family reunification.121 They preferred to focus

instead on the issue of the East European Jewry as long as it was possible to negotiate,

and they also feared loosing Soviet support.122

Another aspect of the Soviet Union's demographic contribution to the Israeli war

effort was its noticeable support of the Jewish state’s position on the fate of the 700,000

Arab Palestinians expelled or exiled from the territories gained by the Jewish forces.

The mass forced departure of the Palestinians allowed Israel to expand and homogenize

117 Istochnik, No.1, 1996, pp. 154-155. 118 Uri Bialer, op. cit., p. 146. 119 SIO, t. 2, p. 343. 120 15 September 1948. AVPRF, f. 089, o. 1, p. 1, d. 2, l. 8. 121 21 October 1948. AVPRF, f. 089, o. 1, p. 1, d. 2, ll. 17-19; 20 January 1949. AVPRF, f. 089, o. 2, p. 3, d. 4, l. 2. 122 Uri Bialer, op. cit., p. 75.

34

its territory. The Soviet press ignored the massacre of the Arab village of Deir Yassin

committed by Irgun and Lehi groups on 9 April 1948. During the UN debate, the Soviet

delegates denied that Israel had any responsibility for the fate of the Palestinian peoples

and deflected it instead to Great Britain and the Arab countries. They also supported the

Israeli position rejecting the plan of Count Bernadotte, the appointed mediator in the

Arab/Jewish conflict, which proposed a Palestinian right to financial compensation.

Israel requested that this question be raised in the course of peace negotiations.

Vyshinskii and Molotov agreed with this position.123 In a letter to Golda Meyerson, M.

Shertok underlined that "all my talks with the Russians" indicated "the absence of any

interest in, or concern about, the fate of the Arab refugees, utter contempt for the

progressive forces in the Arab states, and so forth.”124 In December 1948 the Soviet

Union voted against UN General Assembly resolution 194-III, which would allow Arab

refugees wishing to return to their homes to do so or be compensated for loss or damage

to property.

The Cold War and the Great Game

Since Moscow provided political, military, and demographic support to Israel,

the Soviet alliance with the Zionist movement was large and multidimensional. It could

be characterized as a strategic alliance. Why did the anti-Zionist Soviet leaders make

this unexpected alliance? This decision can be explained only by geopolitical and

ideological factors. In the emerging bipolar Cold War order, there were no peripheries

for Great Powers, as Kenneth Waltz has noted.125 The Mediterranean basin and the

Near East constituted a weak point for the USSR, as Russia had been almost absent

from these areas since 1917. In 1943 Soviet leaders tried to return, and they believed

that support for the Zionist cause would assist them in accomplishing this goal.

Britain’s loss of Palestine, following that of India, would change the balance of

power, as noted in a draft memorandum on the creation of the Cominform written in the

summer of 1947.126 Supporting the Zionist movement would also enable Moscow to

play its favorite game of dividing the capitalist powers. In addition, it would enhance

12316 October 1948. AVPRF, f. 07, o. 21b, p. 49, d. 39, l. 86. 124 DISR, t. 1, p. 399. 125 Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading: Addison Wesley Publishing Company, 1979): 171.

35

the status of the Soviet Union among Jews around the world. This strategy had been

successful during the war, thanks to the Jewish Antifascist Committee led by S.

Mikhoels, and would similarly, Moscow reasoned, weaken the post-war anti-Soviet

offensive in the United States and Great Britain. Support for the Jewish state,

moreover, would further inflame the tension between the Zionist movement and its

British and American protectors already exacerbated by the terrorist attacks against the

British forces and by the situation of Jewish DP’s in camps in Germany and in Cyprus.

Thus, Moscow concluded that if the Soviet Union were to succeed in weakening

Great Britain in the Middle East, the Zionist movement was the only means of doing so.

Zionist leaders were determined to get their own state and not to miss the opportunity

provided by thousands of candidates to emigrate waiting in refugees camps in Europe

and in Cyprus. Moreover, Moscow suspected most Arab leaders of being British agents.

Despite the existence of Arab communist parties, the Soviet Union exerted only very

limited influence in Arab countries.

This Cold War dynamic was rooted in a longstanding geopolitical dynamic. As

in Tsarist times, Great Britain remained the main enemy in the Middle East. As Silvio

Pons has pointed out, "Soviet political culture had a tendency to conceive of the future

as a repetition of the past."127 After 1945 the Soviet Union renewed the earlier "Great

Game." By 1944 Moscow tried to launch an offensive in Iran128 and then in Turkey, but

these failed to destabilize the Western powers. After the independence of India in 1947,

the center of gravity of the "Great Game" moved to the Near East.

The old geopolitical dynamic was strengthened by the ideological factors that

structured the Stalinist perception of the world. The Stalinist leaders considered Great

Britain both an ideological enemy and a geopolitical rival, a capitalist and imperialist

power. As Stalin noted to Bulgarian party leader Dimitrov even before the end of war

in January 1945:

The crisis of capitalism found expression in a division of the capitalists into two factions — one fascist, the other democratic. An alliance came about between us and the democratic faction of the

126 RGASPI, f. 575, o. 1, d. 3, ll. 62-63. 127 Silvio Pons, op. cit., p. 291. 128 On the Iranian issue see Natalia Egorova, "The Iran Crisis of 1946: A View from the Russian Archives," Working Paper No.15, Cold War International History Project (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1997; Jamil Hasanli, "New Evidence on the Iran Crisis 1945-1946," Cold War International History Project Bulletin, No. 12-13 (2001): 309-314.

36

capitalists because they were concerned about tolerating Hitler's rule, since its harshness would have driven the working class to extremes, and so to the overthrow of capitalism itself. We are now with one faction against the other, but in the future we shall be against that capitalist faction too."129

The Soviet perception of international relations was based on profound hostility

to the capitalist world, grounded in the dualistic friend/enemy categories of the Soviet

leaders’ conflict-based political culture. Soviet foreign policy was thus based on a

desire to compete with the enemy camp for global hegemony on all levels. Because of

all of these factors, during the first years of the Cold War, the Zionist movement

appeared to be Moscow’s best possible ally in the Middle East. The Soviet-Israeli

alliance thus continued until 1949, after which it began to slowly deteriorate until a

deep crisis in 1952 led to the severing of diplomatic relations in the very last days of

Stalin's life. However, the end of the alliance was a consequence of Soviet internal

factors more than a new strategy of alliance in the Middle East, which would be formed

only in 1955 through rapprochement between Stalin’s successor Nikita Khrushchev and

Egyptian president Abdul Nasser.

129 Quoted in Mikhail M. Narinski, "The Soviet Union and the Berlin Crisis," Francesca Gori and Silvio Pons, eds.. The Soviet Union and Europe in the Cold War, 1943-1953 (London: Macmillan Press, 1996): 58.

37

Author’s Note

Laurent Rucker holds a PhD in political science and is a lecturer at the Institut d'études

politiques de Paris (Sciences-Po). His dissertation is titled "The USSR and the Israeli-

Arab Conflict 1941-1956." His publications include: Staline, Israël et les Juifs (Paris,

PUF, 2001); (with William Karel) Israël-Palestine: Une terre deux fois promise (Paris:

Editions du Rocher, 1998); and numerous articles on Soviet and Russian foreign policy

and Soviet Jews. He is a member of the Editorial board of the French journal Questions

Internationales (published by La documentation française).